


RIP

by orphan_account



Series: Patater Parents [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Patater Parents, death of a pet (fish)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 14:25:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8581954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Kent thinks it's going to be a nice, easy day.  Until he goes downstairs and sees the tragedy inside his daughter's fishbowl.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by IRL events (basically I just went downstairs and found my 9 year old’s fish dead--and I have to tell her in one hour and forty minutes and it’s gonna be...less than fun. Here’s hoping a trip to the pet shop for a new fish softens the blow. RIP Fish who is sometimes called Jake. 2014-2016)

Stretching in the bed, Alexei arches his back, then flops onto his side, the duvet making a loud fwump as he half-lands on his equally sleepy husband. Apart from getting up at what Kent describes as the “ass-crack of dawn” to get their kiddo off to school, they had little to nothing on the agenda for the day.

Which was exactly how Kent wanted to spend his day off.

“Is your turn pick up Irinochka,” Alexei says, burrowing his face in Kent’s neck.

Kent groans and looks over at the clock. He’s still got an hour before he has to leave to get a reasonable spot in the pick-up queue, but he also promised he’d load up the dishes in the dishwasher before he went.

Domesticity was nice until he had shit to do.

Uhg.

“Fine,” he grumbles, and turns Alexei’s face to kiss him before rolling out of the bed. He decides his shitty joggers and Falconers shirt with the hole in the seam is good enough since he absolutely does not plan to get out of the car unless he can help it. He’s happy to take Irina through a drive-thru for ice cream but he will be damned if he sets foot outside on actual pavement that isn’t his own driveway.

It’s his day off, damn it.

Padding down the stairs, Kent runs a hand through his messy locks, then turns the corner into the kitchen. He gives Kit, who’s perched on a kitchen chair, a quick scritch, then bends over toward the counter to poke his nose in at Irina’s prized pet--her beta who has hung on for an absurd amount of years, and has weathered two moves.

Fish, who is sometimes called Jake, is not swimming to the top of the water for Kent’s usual greeting, however.

No, Fish, who is sometimes called Jake, is lying listless, sort of almost greyish, at the bottom of the bowl.

Well.

Fuck.

Kent scrubs a hand down his face, then takes four steps back into the main room so he can call up the stairwell. “Aloysha!”

He waits, and only silence greets him.

“Aloysha!”

Still, nothing.

“Alyoshenka get your ass down here!”

There’s a loud grumble, and thumping, and shuffling, and as Kent walks back into the kitchen, he can hear his husband’s footfalls stepping into the hall, then into the kitchen.

“I’m nap. What is problem?”

Kent sighs, and points his finger in the direction of Fish’s bowl. There’s a pause, then Alexei heaves a sigh. “Yeah,” Kent says. “So that’s gonna be real fuckin’ fun.”

Alexei steps up and taps the side of the bowl as though somehow it might shock the fish into pulling a Jesus and resurrecting itself. Kent, for the sake of their somewhat sensitive daughter, kind of hopes for the miracle.

But well, they’re Jewish and by proxy so is Fish so the chances were slim to none. The fish remains dead. The water does not change to wine.

Damn.

“I’ll just...” Kent says, thinking. “Look, you just clean the fuck out of the tank and I’ll take her to the petstore and then like...soften the blow with a new fish.”

Alexei wrinkles his nose. “You think this work? Get new fish, make her feel okay?”

Kent thinks maybe Alexei is chirping him for a second, but then he sees the distressed look on his husband’s face and he pulls him close. “Babes, I had like at least ten fish growing up. They die, okay? Like, this is a fishbowl, not an open-ocean sanctuary. She’ll have to deal with this at some point.”

They both turn and look at Kit as the realisation hits them that at some point they’re going to lose her too, and boy that’s a shitty thought. Kent shakes himself out of it because Kit’s only seven and she’s got like....a fuck-tonne of years to go.

“I’ll get her some ice cream or some shit, too.”

“Maybe I come with you. So she have both parents, not be too upset.”

Kent rolls his eyes and smacks Alexei on the shoulder. “You just wanna get out of scrubbing the tank and get ice cream.”

Alexei shrugs, and doesn’t deny it, but he does volunteer to send Fish, who is sometimes called Jake, to his watery resting place. Kent takes over the cleaning, and by the time they’re meant to leave, the tank is upside down drying, and the old rocks and things are in the bin.

They make the drive and Kent is second in line, behind the guy with the Mets sticker whom he hates, and spends the next ten minutes chirping the fuck out of the guy who can’t hear him through rolled up windows.

Soon enough, they hear the distant bell, and they see all the kinders come out first, then the rest of the students once the tiny ones have been delivered into safe hands.

Irina is taking her time, as she always does, her bright orange bunny backpack hiked up her shoulders, chatting away to a friend like she has nothing better to do in the world--and she’s nine so of course she doesn’t. Kent holds on to that smile and pretends like it’s not going to be the worst fucking thing in the world to see her burst into tears. And he knows his kid. She lost it when her succulent died whilst they were on vacation six months ago. And Fish had been with them for what felt like forever.

Alexei reaches over and takes his hand the moment Irina spots them, and he can see little tufts of dust rising as she runs across the courtyard, and out the gate.

Alexei gets out to greet her, swinging her into a huge hug, kissing her on the cheeks. “How was school, kotyonok? You do good today? Not get in any trouble?”

“No,” then she rattles on for twenty minutes as Kent tries to manoeuvre out of the car park through evil parents who don’t seem to care that he’s driving a Benz, god fucking damn it.

Irina is going on and on about the annoying boy at her table that, “Everyone thinks I have a crush on but I don’t because crushes are gross and I will never, ever have a crush. Ever.”

Kent believes her, of course, and says, “You just keep tellin’ em, Princess.”

Alexei nudges Kent as soon as they get onto the main road, and Kent feels his heart beating in his chest like it wants to break free, and he slows to a stop at a red light.

His hands are shaking when he meets her gaze in the mirror.

“Daddy, why do you look like you’re gonna puke? That will make the car smell so gross.”

“I uh. Well. Baby, I uh. Have some not great news.”

She blinks.

“So remember that um. Fish you have...?”

Her face kind of falls. “He lost some scales on Monday,” she says, her voice tiny. “Is he...did he...?”

“Yes,” Kent says in a rush, “but I was thinking we’d go pick out a new fish and then we can get some ice cream and whatever you want, okay baby? Okay?”

She sniffles and a few tears leak out, and she looks out the window like she’s in a dramatic Lifetime Movie. The scenery passes by and the GPS chirps that they’re five minutes away from the pet shop.

“Daddy?” she asks in a very small voice.

“Yes, my love. What do you need?” Kent says, knowing Alexei is going to chirp the living HELL out of him later on for it, but he doesn’t fucking care right now because his baby is crying.

She looks at him, she swallows, and sniffles. “Can I get a puppy instead?”

*** 

Kent says no.

But when has what Kent said in regards to what their kid wants ever mattered?

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, no, my kid is not getting a puppy today.


End file.
